Phil Varcas in our communications tent

Xantrex Powerpack with Morningstar Prostar Controller

Base Camp Communications
9 May 2005    
Today's weather forecasts have confirmed that, as much as one can tell, our plans to head to C1 tomorrow are on track. When one knows that rest is limited it becomes far more valuable and appreciated. Folks are enjoying a lazy day knowing that from 5.00am tomorrow the comforts of BC will be left behind for several days. Tomorrow our Sherpa team will relocate and reconstruct our camp 1.

Our bright yellow centrally located communications tent offers the vital resources for keeping folks in contact with the outside world: namely computer and phone. It seems every year we have issues in providing continuous reliable power to our ever increasing list of electrical devices.

This year thanks to the use of Xantrex XPower Pack 300 (www.xantrex.com) we can honestly say we have had no lack of power. No limitations have been placed on the number of DVD's folks are able to watch! The XPower Powerpacks are a classy portable battery unit that have an integrated invertor and a Morningstar Corporation Prostar 15 voltage controller (www.morningstarcorp.com).

Adventure Consultants guides (including our illustrious boss) are notorious at jerry rigging electrical systems and blowing up very expensive appliances! This year nothing could go wrong even if we tried. By that I mean the straightforward connection system means that even we have not had any problems working out where to place which wire.

We are using two 32 watt Uni-Solar flexible panels to feed into each 'power pack'. These industrial solar panels have served us well for many years. Our laptop computer is the rugged Panasonic Toughbook CF-29 which is proving to be very reliable. We have no need for noisy unreliable generators!

For more information on these electrical systems please contact the Adventure Consultants Office.

Cheers for now
Mike for the AC Team